Life History strategy, Psychopathic Attitudes, personality, and general intelligence

This study attempted to replicate recent findings that Life History (LH) strategy predicts neither Psychopathic Attitudes (psychopathy, risk-taking, and mating effort) nor general intelligence ( g). Further, we examined relations among LH strategy, Psychopathic Attitudes, and the Big Five to compare and contrast the personality correlates of these latent factors. Participants completed a measure of general intelligence (APM-18) and completed questionnaires measuring life history strategy, psychopathy, Risk-Taking Attitudes, mating effort, and Big-Five personality traits. An exploratory factor analysis detected two uncorrelated latent factors: The K-Factor and Psychopathic Attitudes. Neither the K-Factor nor Psychopathic Attitudes predicted general intelligence. In contrast, the K-Factor correlated positively with Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and negatively with Neuroticism. Psychopathic Attitudes correlated positively with Extraversion and negatively with Agreeableness. We discuss the implications of these data for LH theory and its relation to intelligence and antisocial traits.